Monday, October 12, 2009

It's Cold Outside

I spent most of the weekend at the house with a chipper little four-year-old for company. She entertained herself quite well while I puttered about. Mostly I worked on scrubbing walls and cabinets in the kitchen addition. The pictures from yesterday's post don't show the layer of grease, dust, cobwebs, and general grime that cover most surfaces in the kitchen. I also did some work insulating outlets along exterior walls. Our energy audit showed the outlets as a large source of cold air intrustion in the kitchen.

Charles was busy all weekend with performances of his most recent play, but he was able to help me pry up the nasty sections of subfloor in the kitchen. We also pulled up the carpet from the dining room (nice wood floors under this) and from the living room (nice wood floors under this too, except they have some kind of primer painted on them).

Later in the afternoon my mom stopped by, as did my aunt and uncle J & L. They got a tour of the house and grounds. Then J wanted to see the basement. Sounds reasonable enough, right? Except that the basement steps were among the top items on our to-do list. At some point a giant hole had been cut through the support under the stairs in order to run ductwork. The expected result was that the entire staircase was collapsing. J & my mom ventured down, one at a time. Ostensibly, they went down just to check things out, but a few minutes later my mom yelled upstairs asking if we could scrounge up some 2x4s from out at the barn. So, several of us headed out to the barn, collecting pieces of scrap wood. And by the time J came up from the basement we had newly braced, sturdy steps for him to walk on. Family is such a blessing.

Now if I could only say the same about Mother Nature. I realize it is October, but really, highs of barely 50 degrees? We have a lot of outside work to do, and the sooner the better. But if we don't get temperatures a bit warmer it's going to be either miserable and/or impossible to tackle some of these tasks until spring. This whole summer has been unusually cool, so surely we're due for the mildest November on record. Surely.

"When we build let us think we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone. Let is be such work that our descendants will thank us for, and let us think, as we lay stone upon stone, that a time is to come when these stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say, as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, 'See! This our fathers did for us.'" ~John Ruskin (1819-1900)